Carefree Celtic punish troubled Hearts

By Roddy Forsyth

12:01AM BST 27 Aug 2007

Celtic (2) 5 Hearts (0) 0

The big talk from the Romanov dynasty at Tynecastle has been of the proposed £51 million redevelopment of the stadium and how it will be a splendid asset to Hearts and Edinburgh. On the evidence of Saturday's thrashing, the new development will be a showcase for costume jewellery.

This humiliation was the latest exposure of the fantasy of Vladimir Romanov that he understands the Scottish game better than native coaches. In fact, the controlling shareholder's meddling makes Hearts' team direction unworkable.

Few careers have been advanced by arguments with dictators and an occupational hazard of working for autocrats is that they sometimes get things right. Romanov can argue that the departure of the Riccarton Three - the dissident players who dared to express reservations about his methods - was beneficial to the club. Steven Pressley, an iconic Hearts captain prior to his ejection last December, was not in Celtic's squad against his old team. Between them Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon have brought in £10 million in transfer fees; at Sunderland Gordon cannot harm Hearts and on Saturday Hartley was on the Celtic bench.

However, the native spine of the team was filleted and replaced by a mushy core of Lithuanians and other eastern Europeans, who may be big in the Baltics but who possess less authority than the characters they followed. As for team management - down the scale from Romanov's diktats, that is - there is Anatoly Korbochka who, in 1978, was declared a Master of Sport in the USSR but who is no commander of the Scottish game.

His assistants are Anguel Tchervenkov, a Bulgarian who has coached at such football temples as Cherno More of Varna and Minyor, the pride of Bobov Dol. Alongside Tchervenkov, but with less input, is Stevie Frail, the last significant example of continuity with George Burley's spell as manager.

Frail gained respect last season as the club man who acted as a point of focus for a schismatic squad but his verdict was indisputable: "Zero complaints - outpassed, outfought, outplayed."

Celtic, of course, were carefree. They were 2-0 up at half-time thanks to Shunsuke Nakamura's rebounding shot off Christophe Berra and Massimo Donati's swerving run and drive, but they would have had five had Scott McDonald enjoyed better luck with his shooting. Hearts, having gambled all three substitutes at the restart, paid the price when Andy Driver missed their best chance. Celtic dissected them with exuberant goals from Nakamura and Scott Brown plus a penalty converted by Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Hearts were left short-handed when Neil McCann suffered a double leg break.

Celtic, without the hamstrung Kenny Miller, meet Spartak Moscow in the home return of their Champions League qualifier on Wednesday, eastern Europeans who know what they are doing.

"In Moscow we saw that Spartak are dangerous and have stamina, because they were strong right to the end," captain Stephen McManus said.

What hope then for Hearts, whose club website opened their account of Saturday's match with this candidly damning verdict: "We feared the worst. We got it."